Existentialism
by Semjaza
Summary: Dante finds someone he's been missing, but the underworld has a way of changing people. Surviving Hell might not be as difficult as surviving Vergil. Twincest, violence, the Divine Comedy. Dante x Vergil. Revised and updated.
1. Prologue

Existentialism

Disclaimer: I own nothing but a hoard of occult books, some sketchy plants, and vast quantities of Satanic literature. And while I realize that possessions are fleeting (haha), I'd rather not have to sell mine to pay legal fees.

Rated M for angst, twincest, blasphemy, language, violence, slash (m/m relationships), sexual themes, sad attempts at humour, mutilation of both poetry and literature, and dubious consent. For starters. This takes place after all the games and the anime. Feedback is always appreciated, although my hatred of this story knows no bounds, haha.

To reiterate, this is **Dante x Vergil**, with implied **Vergil x Dante**. If you don't like the pairing, please don't bother reading.

**Revised 09/11.**

* * *

Prologue

_Midway upon the journey of our life  
__I found that I was in a dusky wood;  
__for the right path, whence I had strayed,  
__was lost._

- From the _Inferno_ Canto One, lines 1-3. _The Divine Comedy_ by Dante Alighieri, as translated by Lawrence Grant White.

Looking at the swirling sky made him sick, and dizzy. He ignored it, head down, watching his leather boots trudge through the ochre-coloured dust. The motorcycle hadn't taken well to this part of Hell's rust-flecked winds and all-pervasive desert, and the engine had died with a few choked sputters some time ago. Dante couldn't pinpoint when, exactly, but that was what made this Hell, after all.

He wasn't tired, so he couldn't have been walking all that long. With each footstep, he settled a bit deeper into the burning sands. The razor wind whipped through his snowy hair and stung his eyes, making him wish that he'd given this venture a bit more thought. _Explore Hell, what a great fucking idea_, he thought, and then stopped, because analyzing his actions wasn't something he did. Ever. _I guess here you get to think about things until you go crazy. Awesome_.

Dante shoved the thoughts away and glanced around, hoping to find something to kill. He wanted to get lost in the haze of bloodlust; to find a messy piece of violence to soothe himself with. A bit of demonic ass-kicking would clear his head, and give him time to figure out what to do. His best plans always came to him while he wallowed knee-deep in blood. It was his nature. Much of his happiness was dependent upon the suffering of other beings. Even if there were a few bottom-feeders lurking about, that would be all he needed.

There was nothing. Just sky above him and sand beneath him, both writhing in the wind. No sun to give direction, no landmarks to point the way. Dante pulled his red coat closer around him and turned slowly in a complete circle. Each compass point held the same view; there was no way to differentiate them. His footprints behind him were lost in the swirling dust. _Fuck_, thought Dante. He kept walking.

* * *

Vergil was dreaming.

He stood in front of his childhood home, holding a knife in his hands. It had been a gift from Dante, unasked for and thoughtless. He couldn't find his twin, couldn't find anyone, really, but being alone had never bothered Vergil. His gaze swept over the large manor house, covered in ivy and flowing wisteria. The empty windows stared back at him like the blank eyes of the dead.

The afternoon sun gave an ethereal quality of light to this moment. It was softly golden, flitting through the leaves of the many stately trees surrounding the yard. A light breeze stirred the flowers that had been carefully planted and lovingly tended, and their heady scent filled the air. Birds fluttered everywhere, eating small berries and insects, and chirping happily. Bees droned loudly, humming contentedly in the late summer heat.

In the forest surrounding the house, just out of sight, his mother died, slowly. He couldn't hear her screams for all the birds that sang, joyfully, in the garden. He couldn't prevent her blood from spilling onto the earth, greedily absorbed by thirsty trees. He didn't begin to look for her until that evening, when the house was still dark, and void of life.

The dream faded and another began.

He hadn't meant to, really. They'd been playing, fighting, and Dante, clumsy oaf that he was, had tripped at just the wrong moment. Vergil had reacted without meaning to, stepping sideways and dipping the sword, offering it to his brother's heart. A wet crunch and a sound like silk tearing and he nearly let go of the hilt. He stared as blood poured down the katana onto his hands, warm and slick. The smell of it made him dizzy. He yanked the blade out of his little twin brother, who keened in pain and fell forward into Vergil's waiting arms.

"You're mean," Dante whined, despite the fact that he was barely able to breathe. "I'm telling Mom."

The last dream was the worst.

As he pulled Yamato out of Dante (all grown up now, and not half so clumsy), he stepped away and let him fall.

It got easier each time.

* * *

Dante hated walking. And deserts. And he sure wasn't too fond of Hell either, for that matter. He stopped struggling through the sand and glared at the sky, wishing it would change. It didn't. He slowly circled around, looking in every direction for some way of distinguishing it from the others. Nothing. _Next time, a trail of breadcrumbs, or a ball of string, or something. None of this 'lost in Hell' shit. Fuck fuck fuck..._

The devil-hunter sighed and wiped his burning eyes. He shut them tightly and counted silently to sixty. He looked around again. Nothing. Red sky, red ground. No rocks, no trees, no demons. An endless, hazy horizon stretched as far as he could see. He pulled Ebony from her holster and fired into the distance. The shots barely echoed, seemingly absorbed by the landscape. Dante reached for Alastor, his companion for this mission, but the sword slid quietly from its sheath, razor sharp and lifeless.

It was around this time that something began to nag at the edges of the half-devil's consciousness. Worry. Not a lot, but a hint, here and there. That Lady and Trish wouldn't know where to start looking, even if they decided to look at all. That Nero, who might have come after Dante if only he knew, had no more chance of getting into Hell than his little girlfriend Kyrie. And V- _Nope. Not even gonna go there. _

Dante shook his head to clear it, something his older twin had always mocked him for. _No. I will not think about Vergil. Oh. Damn. _He scratched his head with the barrel of Ebony, and set off in a new direction. Or, what he thought might possibly be a new direction, barring the fact that all paths seemed to be the same path here.

And then something. A lump on the ground, just barely within his field of vision. _Great. Now the hallucinations begin. I hope it's pizza. _Dante set off towards the thing, not caring what it was as long as it existed, if only in his head. The thing did not move away from him as he headed towards it, which made him hopeful. _Maybe it's luring me in so it can try to kill me. Maybe it has beer. I hope it has beer, I'm thirsty..._

As he got closer, the thing's shape became clearer, roughly humanoid. It lay on its side, wrapped in what appeared to be a funeral shroud, half buried in the sand. It was easily as large as Dante, and its cloth-covered wrists were bound tightly together with silver wire. _Lovely_, thought Dante, _this is the last poor fuck that got lost here. At least someone thought to bury him. Or try to._

Dante jogged the last few steps to the body, kneeling beside it. It filled the shroud, not at all desiccated by the burning sands. _Freshly dead then_, Dante decided, examining the body's wrists. The silver wire cut deeply into the flesh, and dried blood stained the shroud. _So it was still alive when it was prepared for burial. That would suck. _He reached down with deft fingers to pull the greying wrapping away from the face. _Let's see who we have here_.

_Oh shit._

The body below him, pale but without decay, wore his own features. Frost-coloured hair framed high cheekbones, a strong jaw line and full lips.

"Vergil?" he wondered aloud, a frisson of horror passing through him. _Or me?_

* * *

Review if you like, or correct my spelling/grammar, or something.


	2. Thirst

Disclaimer: I don't own, I just play. Rated M.

**Revised.**

* * *

Thirst

_"If your eyes are not deceived by the mirage  
__Do not be proud of the sharpness of your understanding  
__It may be your freedom from this optical illusion  
__Is due to the imperfectness of your thirst."  
__- Sohrawardi_

There are ways of telling twins apart, of course. For all that nature had crafted them identically, Dante and Vergil were opposing forces: fire and ice, flesh and steel. Dante touched the cold face in front of him and _knew_ it was Vergil, not some paltry doppelganger set out to unnerve him. _As if _that _were possible_, Dante thought, steadfastly refusing to consider the endless desert swirling around him.

He pulled the body the rest of the way out of the sand and set about unwrapping it. _Not to be a pervert, just to look for information. _Vergil was clothed under the shroud, but his garments were shredded and bloodied. The black leather pants and elaborate, sleeve-less shirt had been sliced vertically, as though someone had deliberately cut them. _His shirt's still probably worth more than all my gear put together._

"Some things never change, do they, Vergil," the half-devil murmured.

Despite the state of his clothing, his twin's body didn't seem to be visibly wounded aside from where the silver wire sliced into the wrists. Of course, Vergil had always healed as swiftly as Dante, and for certain types of wounds, he'd healed faster. Dante slid his hands under the remains of Vergil's shirt and felt his chest. The smooth skin was chill to the touch, hard muscle devoid of life. Vergil was a bit thinner than he had been; Dante's fingers rubbed over his ribs.

"No heartbeat, Vergil? Though knowing you, that might not mean much."

The half-devil stood to stretch his aching back, then knelt in the sand once more. His twin's skin was numbingly pale next to the lurid sands. He lifted Vergil's bound hands to examine the silver wire, noting that his brother had gotten a few new tattoos since they'd last had the misfortune to meet.

Vergil had always refused to tell Dante how he'd managed to keep the ink in his skin. As a teenager, the younger devil had wasted hundreds of dollars on artwork that his body rejected and healed a few hours later. A shame too, 'cause Dante was still convinced that his designs were easily more awesome than the tiny black sigils that Vergil had chosen. They stretched in a delicate line from the middle of each palm to an inch past his wrist, coiling and unfurling in a graceful pattern that made Dante's eyes hurt. _Probably some spooky magic shit. Lame as fuck. _

"You lost your gloves as well as Yamato, huh Vergil? Bet that pissed you off," Dante mused, plucking at the wire and flinching back when it sliced his fingers to the bone. "Shit... But not to worry. Yamato, at least, is safe." His fingers healed in a moment, but Dante glanced dubiously at the wire. It pained him to think that his brother had met his end as someone's prisoner. _I should take that off him. He shouldn't be tied up like some animal. Although..._

"Let it never be said that you didn't deserve what you got," Dante said, brushing the silvery hair off Vergil's forehead with a gesture that wasn't quite affectionate. _Why am I talking to him? He's a corpse, for fuck's sake. And maybe a hallucination. And if mirages are supposed to be of the things we want, mine should've been a case of beer and a pizza, not this fucker. I mean..._

Dante refused to let himself finish the thought and instead looked around for something to get rid of the wire. He couldn't shoot through it without damaging Vergil's hands, and there was no way he could wedge Alastor under it. The devil-hunter didn't carry a knife, and a quick check of Vergil's boots revealed his brother didn't either. _Maybe I can stretch it, or slide it off, or something... _

Dante moved closer to Vergil's body and picked his twin's cold hands up in his own. He managed to slide one thumb between Vergil's wrists and under the wire, hissing as his flesh was torn once more. The wire sliced into his fingers at first, but seemed to accommodate after a moment. Dante had gotten all of one hand and most of the other into the loop when the wire suddenly lengthened and Vergil's hands fell free.

_Finally_, Dante thought, and started to pull the wire from his bloodied fingers. It snapped tightly around his wrists, slicing through flesh and tendons and settling against bone. Blood flowed freely down his arms and soaked the sand beneath him. _Mother fucker..._ was his last coherent thought.

The devil-slayer toppled over onto the body of his twin.

* * *

His eyes ached from the dust, he felt as though he'd gone through a wringer, and Vergil was here beside him. Which made no sense at all. Vergil was dead, and had been for years. Dante had seen to that himself, hadn't he? And yet, here was Vergil, leaning over him, his pale features filled with a mix of scorn and confusion. _Vergil confused? I'm dreaming,_ Dante decided, lifting up his hands (which ached to the bone, strangely) to fist them into Vergil's hair. The white locks were a bit longer than he remembered, and fell forward over his brother's forehead in a way that made Vergil look like him, and didn't he just _love _that.

Dante tightened his grip on his twin and pulled Vergil towards him, pleased when he didn't resist. He half sat up, pressing himself against the body above him. One hand released his twin's hair to slide down his lean back and over the curve of his ass, urging him closer. The devil-hunter leaned forward to claim his brother's mouth, not noticing that his twin hadn't returned his caresses. He kissed Vergil hard, trying to ignore a small, panicky feeling that was starting to well up inside of him, one that he knew was centered around his twin. The pale lips didn't soften under his touches, and Dante licked at them, demanding entrance.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

Dante pulled away at the words, staring bemusedly at what could've been his own face, twisted in anger. _What a shitty dream this is turning out to be... Oh. Damn. _Memories of his impromptu trip through the desert filled Dante's mind, and he roughly shoved Vergil further from him.

"So it is you, then?" He asked stupidly, staggering to his feet. Sand and sky, red as the blood that the sun sets into, lurched around him. He _hated_ deserts.

"Dizzy, are we?" Vergil spoke again, rising easily to his feet. He lifted a graceful hand to display the silver wire, coiled around his index finger as a ring. "A nasty piece of work, but not without its uses. Kind of like y-"

"Fuck off, Vergil. I just saved your sorry mummified ass."

The blue devil snorted. "Yes, I saw that. You know, Dante, there are ways of breaking the spell without surrendering to it. I woke up with you crushing my ribs, and your blood dripping into my eyes."

"You woke up? You were dead, Vergil, not sleeping."

His twin paused at that, but only for a moment. "There's not much difference here," he said softly, his icy blue eyes staring out at the horizon. With his twin seemingly preoccupied, Dante took a moment to stare at him. Vergil was thinner and his hair was longer, yes, but that didn't mean much. What bothered Dante was how _young _he looked, hell, his twin could've been about Nero's age. _That is fucked up_, Dante laughed to himself, _that, and everything else about this day... night... thing._

As though hearing his thoughts, Vergil turned to look at him.

"You're older."

"No shit, Vergil. I'm thirty-six now, I think. As for you..." Dante trailed off.

"As for me, what?" His twin prompted, revealing to Dante a ghost of his old impatience. Vergil folded his arms across his chest, watching Dante like someone observing an insect that they were intent upon crushing.

"You look a lot like you did the last time I saw you... Well, when it was you I saw, and not Nelo Angelo." _When I let you fall..._

"Who's that?" Vergil asked sharply, his near-constant irritation with Dante rising to the surface.

"I- Never mind, Vergil. But you look about nineteen years old, twenty-ish."

"Oh." Vergil was quiet for a moment after that, and Dante almost reached for him, stopping himself just in time. _Get a grip, Dante. You didn't survive all these years just to let Vergil finish you off now._

"It's been a while, Vergil."

"Yes."

"I mean... " _I mean, if you're real, if you're really there, if that wire didn't just kill me and this is some sort of hell within Hell..._

"That can wait, I guess. Know a way out of here?" Dante ran his fingers through his hair, trying to make some sense of the world as it swirled around him. His throat was so dry it ached, and he was sure that if he coughed, he'd taste blood.

"Yes." Vergil dusted off his shredded clothing. He pulled the silver wire-ring off his finger and handed it to Dante, who accepted it warily, tucking it into his pocket. _As far as peace-offerings go, I'd have preferred a -_

"Hurry up, Dante." Vergil was striding across the sands as if he knew where he was going. Part of Dante wanted to simply watch him go. _Vergil's back, and then he's gone again. Problem solved. Of course, I do need to get out of here. Shit._

Dante picked up his sword and followed his twin over the burning dunes. His twin had seemingly made it to the horizon's edge, if that were possible. The slayer quickened his pace and stumbled after the other half-devil. He knew he'd regret this, but that feeling was expected whenever Vergil was involved.

* * *

Please let me know if there are spelling/grammatical errors, or you know, if you liked it, or hated it, or something. :D


	3. Cruelty

Disclaimer: I don't own, I just play. Rated M.

* * *

Cruelty

_Cruelty has a human heart  
__And jealousy a human face;  
__Terror the human form divine,  
__And secrecy the human dress.  
__The human dress is forged iron,  
__The human form a fiery forge,  
__The human face a furnace seal'd,  
__The human heart its hungry gorge.  
__- William Blake, "A Divine Image"_

Dante couldn't decide if Vergil knew a route through the sand dunes, or if the desert simply sculpted itself in response to his brother's will. The crimson sands eventually gave way to a dusky chaparral; the ground was harder here, and instead of sinking into the sand they had to pick their way through jagged black rock. Somehow the sky calmed itself (or as Dante mused, he was calmer and that changed the sky), fading from a lurid red to an orange-pink hue, almost a normal colour. The devil-slayer looked around, taking more interest in his surroundings now that they held some variation. The landscape was no longer devoid of life; small shrubs, crowned with vicious thorns and smelling of creosote, were starting to appear as they walked further from the desert.

"Hey, there are plants here," he noted, glancing at his twin.

"I see them," Vergil answered softly, turning back to give Dante a look that clearly stated _'You_ _Idiot_,' before continuing on. Dante didn't care. It was the most this strange creature in front of him had said since they'd started walking, and _that_ seemed like days ago.

"So there must be water around here somewhere," he continued, idly running his fingers over Ivory's smooth barrel. Wishing for a beer now seemed like aiming too high in this place, but water might be a start. _Water, to which I can add barley, and hops, and-_

Vergil snorted. "It's Hell, Dante. There's no water fit to drink here."

"I'm pretty sure that I read something, somewhere, about there being, you know, rivers or some shit down here," Dante protested, knowing full well how difficult it would be for Vergil to resist correcting him.

"There are rivers, but not of water. Lethe is forgetfulness, Cocytus is the madness of grief, Phlegethon is fire, the Slith is a river of knives, and the Styx is full of corpses. Acheron, nearest here, is a river of blood, not water. That's what moistens the ground enough for the trees to grow, and that in itself is a mockery of creation. Forget about water."

"What do you drink then? All these years you've been down here...?" Dante wondered.

Vergil ignored him, turning away. The vegetation grew thicker, if not higher, and thorns snagged on Dante's boots and chaps. His twin remained in the lead despite the roughness of the terrain, paying little heed to his already damaged clothing, and crashing through the brush as though he had a personal vendetta against it. _Which, knowing Vergil, could be entirely possible_, Dante mused.

The slayer followed his twin's gaze and found darkness on the horizon. Squinting, he discovered the inky black mass was actually a forest, the trees seeming to absorb light from the space around them. Nearer to them, the spiky shrubs were gradually becoming skeletal trees. Their trunks were twisted, as though in agony, and reeked of decay. A bloody sap oozed from deep scratches gouged in the bark, as though the trees had clawed themselves with their own contorted limbs. Dante pushed that thought firmly out of his head.

"Where are we going?" he asked abruptly, starting to get edgy again. _A fight would be good. All this walking is starting to piss me off. My poor bike..._

His twin murmured something that sounded vaguely Italian.

"What?"

"The forest of suicides."

"Sounds like fun. I didn't think there'd be any way to make this trip worse, but hey, I think we just found it," Dante paused in his rant to catch up to Vergil. "Why the fuck would we want to go in there?"

"Because it's an easy place to get out of, if you don't belong there," Vergil snapped, irritated, it seemed, simply by Dante's presence. "There are new souls arriving every minute, and each one creates a rift between the worlds. A personal Hellgate, in fact. So if someone not bound to this realm were looking to escape it, it would be a likely place to try."

"And you intend to leave here. I thought this place was your home?" Dante knew it was cruel but couldn't help himself. Vergil deserved it, if indeed it was Vergil beside him. His twin, utterly merciless, had never missed a chance to bait him. _Payback_, Dante thought. He could almost literally see Vergil's hackles rise.

"I am sick to death of this place," his twin hissed, turning to glower at Dante.

"No shit, bro. Is that why you're almost being nice to me?" The hunter was itching for a fight. While in the past, picking a fight with Vergil was pretty much asking for an ass-kicking, Dante thought he could take him now. It wasn't as if he hadn't beaten him before. Once.

"One good turn deserves another." Vergil's tone was sarcastic, his pale eyes filled with scorn. He watched his twin carefully, hands clenched into fists at his sides.

"More like, no good deed goes unpunished," Dante laughed, and hit him.

* * *

Later, if he'd been asked to describe the fight, Dante would've called it surreal. They were both naturally violent; Vergil as quick as he was to apply force when the need called for it. Granted, he was usually more subtle about it than Dante, but the aggression was there just the same. Perhaps more so.

As it was, the red devil had ducked (barely) the left hook his brother had retaliated with, and, as seemed fair, dropped Ebony, Ivory, and Alastor onto a nearby rock. Vergil was unarmed and clad in grave garb, but years of training and natural instinct had left him with a reaction time that Dante could never hope to match. The slayer had forgotten how graceful his twin was, how easily he dodged and blocked, how he kept one step ahead. This ability was going a long way towards convincing Dante that this really was his brother. And he got kicked in the throat as he thought about this for a millisecond too long.

Rebalancing himself, he watched the other white-haired devil circle around him, searching for the slightest gap in his defences. Vergil's eyes blazed, and to Dante he looked truly alive for the first time since he'd freed him from the wire. Pissed off, too, but Vergil was pissed off much of the time anyway. He could still run circles around Dante, but Dante had fought demons and gained their souls for years while Vergil was... away. And now he simply over-powered his twin.

Dante pinned him to the rocky ground, not just with weight and upper-body strength, but with infernal power. He knew it was power, else Vergil would've broken his hold and rolled away, or twisted with his own impossible strength and forced Dante to release him. That he did neither bothered the fuck out of the devil-slayer.

And then Dante realized what had happened. Which was pretty much the worst part of it. And it made it all his fault, too, confirming without a doubt that the creature under him was Vergil. _Fuck_.

"I guess being Nelo Angelo took a lot out of ya, huh Verg? ...And then the Order of the Sword, their demonic power-source... Fuck I'm sorry."

"I don't know what you're talking about. Get off me." His twin was looking anywhere but at his face; eyes searching the sky behind Dante's head.

Part of Dante, the more mature part, knew he should let Vergil up, and maybe not talk about this until they were out of this place, and could really sort things out. This part wanted to make things right between them, if that were possible. The other part was gloating that it was on top of Vergil.

"Do you give up?" he asked playfully, leaning in close and nuzzling against his brother. Vergil was silent. When Dante pulled back to look at him, Vergil wouldn't meet his gaze.

"How many years, Dante?" The swordsman asked, too softly.

"What? How many years were you here? I don't know, fifteen, eighteen? I'm not much for keeping track. Too long, anyway." The red devil stopped abruptly, wanting to take back that last part. There was no point in feeling anything for Vergil; any sentiment he expressed would only be turned against him.

The slayer rolled off his twin, settling himself cross-legged beside Vergil. His brother sat up, saying nothing. Vergil moved as if to take off his gloves, realized he wasn't wearing any, and simply folded his hands in his lap instead. Dante found the gesture un-nerving. Vulnerability and Vergil simply did not mix. He waited for his twin to speak again, growing irritated at the lingering silence. It seemed as though Vergil had returned from the dead simply to piss him off. He really didn't know what to do about this whole situation.

"So..." he began, wondering when Vergil would interrupt and say they needed to get going. His twin was quiet, and Dante forged ahead. "I don't know how much you remember, or what I should tell you. I last saw you like this years ago, on Temen-Ni-Gru. You decided to remain in the Demon World..."

Vergil waved him to silence. "I remember the dark tower. I remember falling into Hell, and I remember Mundus appearing in the sky." His twin ran his fingers through his hair, flicking it backwards out of his eyes. To Dante, it looked as though he would've said more, and then decided not to. Or he was lying. "And then nothing, for a while. I think I dreamed, maybe. I might've roamed for years, I don't know. There's a few places missing in my memories," he admitted.

"I defeated Mundus. You... well, some part of you was working for him. A dark knight, Nelo Angelo. You provided me with the other half of the amulet so I could beat him." Dante tactfully left out the part where he'd utterly destroyed Nelo Angelo, ripping life and power from the knight. He decided he might bring that up sometime when he was sitting further away from Vergil and closer to his weapons.

"And then, maybe a year ago, a group called the Order of the Sword started using demonic power to fuel alchemical transformations. Some of the power was sourced from the remnants of Nelo Angelo, though how they managed that I'll never know. They turned themselves into demons, monsters really, all whilst spouting off about how holy they were."

Vergil snorted, a bit of his malice towards humanity evident in his smirk. Dante cut him off before he could speak.

"They also had Yamato. She was broken, but a knight of the Order managed to heal her."

"Where is the blade now?" Vergil couldn't keep the concern out of his voice. It was probably the _only_ thing that Vergil would ever be concerned about, Dante mused. His twin was, after all, being remarkably calm about returning from the dead, and finding his younger twin was somehow now his older twin. Dante had to hand it to him: not much really fazed Vergil. He was probably only allowing this little bit of brotherly catching-up to study how best to kill him, now that Dante had power, and his own had been mostly squandered by the humans he despised so much.

"Yamato's safe." Dante decided it was time to wrap this conversation up, before things got nasty again. And as soon as he got back to Devil May Cry, he was going to call Nero and tell him to start running. He hauled himself to his feet, offering a hand to Vergil, which was refused. His twin stood up like an offended cat.

"Let's get to this forest-thing. I've had about all I can stand of this place." Dante holstered his guns and sheathed Alastor, feeling a flicker of electric life run through her. _Good, she's waking up again_.

"We're in agreement then. How amazingly awkward." Vergil was watching him with slitted eyes, waiting for a reaction.

Dante grinned and headed towards the inky blackness of the forest.

* * *

A/N: Yeah... slowly but surely, onward we slog... :D Let me know if you like it, or tell me how to fix it, or something...


	4. Voices

Disclaimer: I don't own, I just play. Rated M.

* * *

Voices

_"And upside down in the air were towers  
__Tolling reminiscent bells, that kept the hours  
__And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells."  
__- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land, V:383-385_

The forest was utterly horrid. Dante immediately decided that it was the absolute worst place he'd ever had the misfortune to enter. And that was saying something, coming from a guy who'd once run through the bowels of a giant demonic fish. He was picking putrid lichens out of his hair, trying not to break his ankles on the mass of tangled roots that littered the ground, and not paying any attention whatsoever to where he was going, when he ran into Vergil's back.

"You're a moron." Vergil didn't even bother to turn around to glower; Dante could hear it in his voice.

"Thanks, bro. Are we going to be out of here anytime soon?"

Vergil didn't answer. He gracefully slipped through the dark forest, moving fluidly around branches and over roots, never stumbling and making hardly any noise at all. Dante crashed after him like a bull moose in a trench coat. He could be quiet, if he so chose. But it was more fun to piss off Vergil. It was a game he hadn't been able to play in years.

"Why'd you stop back there?" The hunter checked his guns, making sure each remained in the holsters. Even with his demonic senses, it was hard to see. The forest was black on black, darkness incarnate. The sky, or what glimpses he sometimes thought he caught of it, was a smoky grey. The trees groaned and sometimes twitched and swayed, although there wasn't any wind to move them. Dante thought he heard something dripping, strained to hear it, and then remembered what Vergil had said about the river of blood and wished he hadn't. Strapped to his back, Alastor crackled with displeasure.

"I was listening." Vergil paused again, head tilted slightly to the side. Dante found the effect disturbing; it reminded him of that stupid exorcist movie. He gave Alastor a reassuring pat and sidled closer to his twin.

"Well, stop it. You're freaking out the sword. She's temperamental enough as it is without you pissing her off, too."

Vergil regarded him calmly but said nothing. It was like standing next to some giant, malevolent doll, Dante decided, a marionette that had stolen the shape of his brother. He ran his gloved fingers through his hair and wished fervently to be out of this place.

"That's the idea," Vergil murmured, taking a few steps deeper into the forest. He stopped and leaned with his back against one of the warped tree trunks, picking at the warm, oozing bark.

"What's the idea? I'm pretty sure you can't harm a sword by being mean to it," Dante snapped, moving to stand in front of his twin. Alastor sparked in annoyance; clearly she had no love for Vergil. Dante flicked his fingers over the blade, letting the edge catch and open them, appeasing the sword with his blood. His twin watched him with icy eyes, lips quirked in amusement.

"No. Wishing is the idea."

"I'm... wait- I didn't say that out loud, bro."

"But you were correct, nonetheless."

"You always were spooky as hell."

Vergil smiled, and in the darkness Dante couldn't tell if it was genuine or not. Not that such things mattered when you were dealing with his twin. The hunter took another step closer, figuring Vergil was just as dangerous to him whether he was one foot or twelve feet away. "So you can read minds now?" Dante lifted both hands to brace himself over Vergil, the tree trunk under his hands feeling more like skin than bark.

"Perhaps I always could."

"Naw... I don't think so, Vergil."

"You don't think much at all, Dante."

"And you would know? Creep." The hunter leaned in closer, taking a deep breath and inadvertently catching Vergil's scent, like the first snowfall in winter. He forgot himself, pressing his twin between the tree trunk and his body, face buried in Vergil's neck. Thoughts of how much he'd missed him, _really_ missed him, came unbidden. Dante inwardly cringed, wondering how much of his mind Vergil was picking through at this very moment. _Bastard_.

"Idiot." Vergil was obviously messing with him. Nothing new there.

"Alright, let's get out of here." Dante figured enough was enough. It wasn't as though Vergil was _responsive_, or anything. And he had better things to do than feel up his brother in a fucking haunted forest. He moved to pull away from his twin, but felt Vergil's arms entwine around his neck, strong as steel. Dante tensed for a second, waiting for Vergil to just crush his throat and be done with it. A minute later he was still breathing, which he took to be a positive sign. The hunter dipped his head and trailed soft, wet, open-mouthed kisses from Vergil's collarbone to jaw, pleased when his twin turned away to allow Dante better access.

"So, you don't have anything better to do, then?" Vergil grinned, eyes like chips of ice.

"Fuck off, Vergil." Dante abruptly shoved his twin away from him. Or tried to. Vergil hung on, tightening his grip and kicking his twin's legs out from under him. Dante twisted, trying to find his balance again but knowing it was probably a lost cause. They ended up entwined in a heap on the slimy, leaf-coated ground, with Dante mostly on top, and Vergil wrapped around him, laughing hysterically. The sound sent chills all up Dante's spine, and not in a good way, either.

"You're still a fucking psycho," Dante sputtered, trying to get up. Vergil stopped him, fisting his hands into Dante's snowy hair and yanking him back down. The blue devil kissed his twin hard; Dante could feel teeth behind Vergil's lips, applying enough pressure to bruise. Vergil's tongue slid into his mouth, and all Dante could taste was blood. And then Vergil shoved him away just as suddenly as he'd kissed him.

"What do you want from me?" He hissed at Dante, a flicker of red in his eyes. "Why did you come here?"

Dante shook his head. "I don't know." Vergil's gaze made the slayer uneasy, like the tingle he got just before a Blitz stepped out of the sky.

"Do you believe in predestination, Dante? That 'no man lives till eve whom the fates doom at dawning'?"

"A man born to hang will never drown," Dante provided, bemused but willing to play along. He started to untangle himself from Vergil, moving slowly, as though he were working around a wild animal. "But so what? What does that have to do with anything?"

"If you believe that fate in inescapable, and implacable, and that it is in fact _doom_, in the oldest sense of the word, then look around you. All of these souls could not help but end up here. They had no choice, and the choices they thought they made didn't make any difference. All roads end here anyway. Look Dante, at the trees. Do you see them for what they truly are?" Vergil smiled his scary smile and waited for Dante's reaction.

He had to get out of here, had to get back to his shop and start drinking, and maybe keep drinking for at least a week. Maybe not stop drinking, ever again. The whole forest was a nightmare, a huge, endless nightmare. Dante couldn't imagine there being so many people, ever. And all suffering, weeping and moaning and bleeding; it was a wonder he hadn't heard them before. He'd seen many horrible, gruesome things in his years, hey, he'd caused some horrible, gruesome things himself, but this forest was impossibly awful: cruelty honed into an art form.

The cacophony around him was so intense that he almost missed the sound of a gun being cocked. Vergil held Ivory to the back of his head, right where his spine met his skull; he could feel the chill of the metal against his skin. Dante refused to look at Vergil. "If you're gonna kill me with that, bro, you'll need more bullets."

Vergil laughed. "Not exactly." He squeezed the trigger.

* * *

So, let me know if you liked it, or if it sucked, or something… :D


	5. Troubles

Disclaimer: I don't own, I just play. Rated M. Here are some warnings in case anyone's forgotten them (the prologue was _ages_ ago, lol): Violence, angst (haha, of the existential kind), slash (as in homosexual content), incest, blasphemy, butchery of both poetry and literature, dubious consent to a sexual act, and language. Especially language. If you're not into slash/dubcon, you should probably skip the end part of this chapter. Just sayin'.

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Troubles

_"Distance does not make you falter.  
__Now, arriving in magic, flying,  
__and finally, insane for the light,  
__you are the butterfly and you are gone.  
__And so long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow,  
__you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth."  
__- Johann W. Von Goethe_

Dante would admit to not knowing much, it was true. But of two things, he was very, very certain. One: Taking a bullet through his brainstem messed up his functioning far worse than a shot to his frontal lobe. And two: he was going to beat the shit out of Vergil for revealing this fact to him. Just as soon as he found him, that is. Dante's vision was a haze of reddish light and dark shadow. The devil slayer hadn't bothered trying to stand up yet. His environment swirled and tilted around him in ways he'd only previously experienced while drinking to excess.

Dante's spine and skull ached ferociously, the pain matching that in his jaw and throat as bone and muscle and flesh knit itself neatly back together. He heard a liquid, gurgling sound, but was unsure as to whether it was a natural water source, or simply his own blood and breath mixing into a froth. _Vergil is so very, very dead. Gonna make sure of that, this time._ The hunter held his breath and listened. The sound of bubbling liquid was clear. It seemed to be somewhere below him, but Dante wouldn't bet on that. Not in this place.

Gradually, his vision became less murky and his breathing eased. The devil slayer found himself on a narrow ridge above a river that smelt like a slaughterhouse. His weapons had been placed nearby, Ebony and Ivory set carefully across Alastor. His power-hungry, maybe-dead, sociopathic twin was nowhere in sight. _Great, just fucking great. Vergil's little plan was obviously bullshit._ Dante stood up with the intense care developed by those who are hung-over every weekend. His eyesight blurred and a migraine-like pain shot through his head, but these only lasted for a moment as he steadied himself.

The hunter buckled on his holstered guns and sheathed Alastor across his back. Glancing around, Dante saw that the river below him was in fact boiling, and a second whiff of the reeking steam coming off it confirmed that it was blood, not water. Within the river, some under the rapids and others thrashing in the shallows, were people. Maybe. Dante wasn't sure. It was gross, but not nearly as bad as that hideous forest. The red devil began picking his way further down the rocky slope, hoping he was aiming for the river bank, and not the river itself. He'd never been boiled before, and he was pretty freaking certain that he didn't want to be.

Halfway down from the ridge to the river, Dante found a cave gouged into the hillside, distracting him from his intended destination. He had to stoop to get through the mouth of it, although once in the cavern itself he could stand easily. The walls were cold and smooth and shiny-black like obsidian, and Dante's demonic eyesight revealed the warm blood that dripped and trickled from the ceiling. Alastor crackled, releasing a surge of electricity down his spine, but the hunter ignored her. She hated any place where there wasn't much room to manoeuvre in a fight, and Dante was damned if he was going to make decisions based on an antique devil-arm's environmental preferences.

A natural, unhealthy curiosity compelled Dante to move deeper into the cave, earning him another shock from the blade. He strode purposefully through a narrow, slippery passageway that opened into a second cavernous room. This one was brighter, lit by luminescent moss that hung from the cave ceiling in swirling strands. The hunter could just make out a dark shape in the far right corner, its aura not entirely demonic. The figure, garbed in flowing robes that enveloped its form, noticed his presence and hissed threateningly.

Dante was thrilled. This was _awesome_. He was tired of all this wandering around, not getting out of Hell crap. "Don't like me, huh?" he yelled, drawing his guns. "Well, I think that's fucking fantastic." Dante walked forward, resisting the urge to fill the figure full of lead and instead trying to draw it out, hoping for a better fight. _Gonna paint the walls with its blood and guts..._

Something hard connected with the back of his still-healing skull, sending him reeling. The half-devil landed face first on the floor of the cave, his red trench coat yanked up over his head. He sensed something grab Alastor and use the momentum of his fall to launch themselves over him, leaping at the robed figure. The hunter heard the blade whistle through the air, and a woman's voice screamed in fury before a sickening crunch and splatter put an end to it.

Dante was on his feet a moment later, completely pissed off. Vergil was crouched like a spider at the end of the cavern, eyes closed. He wrapped something up in the robes the figure had worn. Alastor lay discarded at his side, sparking and sizzling.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing, Vergil?" Dante stalked up to his twin, reaching down and snatching up his blade.

The swordsman finished adjusting the corpse and looked up at Dante with a bored expression. "I'll give you three guesses, Dante. What do you think?"

Dante was too enraged to speak for a moment. Vergil seemed pleased by this development. He watched the red devil with his winter-coloured eyes, making no move to stand.

"Had I not intervened, you would've died before your bullets even touched her." His twin spoke quietly, his words soft and mocking. "You walked boldly into a gorgon's lair, you idiot. And then you wanted to play games with it." Vergil stopped, as though he were overwhelmed at the magnitude of Dante's stupidity.

Dante calmed himself enough to mutter a response. "Wouldn't there be more, uh, statuary, in a gorgon's lair?"

"No," his twin hissed, cold fury evident in his voice. "Not always." He gestured to the figure slumped on the floor. "I wrapped up the head, snakes and all. Luckily, she died before she could unveil herself."

"You took my kill," Dante continued to protest.

"I saved your miserable life. Again." Vergil absently traced the tattooed patterns on his wrists and palms. He rose gracefully to his feet, leaving the body where it had fallen. "And despite your belief, our trip through the forest was indeed successful."

Dante growled, nearly ready to trigger. "What? Do you just pick through my thoughts as it pleases you?"

"You thought a Gate would open right there in the forest and let us out? This is Hell, Dante: the only way out is through. Your blood paid the toll and opened a portal, now we just have to find it. The forest was merely an appropriate place to make the offering." Vergil's tone was nonchalant once more. It set Dante's teeth on edge. His twin dusted off his ruined clothes and headed for the passageway out of the cavern.

He'd only taken three steps before Dante jumped him, giving in to his rage and desire to beat the hell out of Vergil. His twin ducked and rolled, using Dante's momentum to throw him off. Dante took a knee to his solar plexus, but managed to grab a fistful of Vergil's silvery hair and slam his head into the obsidian stone floor. Vergil retaliated with a fast right hook that caught Dante square in the mouth, splitting open his bottom lip.

Dante spat blood and dropped his shoulder solidly into his twin's abdomen, knocking the breath from Vergil's lungs. A second later, Dante had him pinned, gasping, on the floor of the cavern. It took all of his physical strength, and no small amount of demonic power, to hold Vergil down. Even so, Dante was surprised that his brother hadn't put up more of a fight.

"You're pissing me off, Vergil," the hunter growled, nose-to-nose with the blue devil.

"Your imbecility is hardly my fault, brother," Vergil drawled, taking advantage of his twin's proximity to lunge upward and taste the blood that spilled from Dante's bruised mouth. And that, if anything, provoked the devil slayer further. All he could hear was the dull pounding of his heart, and a scarlet haze began to edge his vision.

It wasn't difficult to remove the tattered remains of Vergil's clothing. The swordsman watched Dante strip him with detached coldness, his glower the only indication that he acknowledged this assault at all. Vergil offered no resistance, only disdain. He ignored Dante as the hunter put a knee between his legs, pushing them apart. Dante didn't even bother to hold himself up off his twin, letting his weight help keep Vergil on the ground. The slayer hastily unzipped his pants, his gloved hands sliding down either side of the other half-devil's ribcage.

Dante shifted his weight, lifting Vergil's hips and forcing himself into his twin. The blue devil's hands clenched into fists, and his breath hitched a little as he was penetrated, but other than that Vergil gave no sign that he was even aware of Dante moving against him. Dante's mouth found Vergil's throat, and he left a trail of hard kisses and bites along it, raising bruises that faded almost immediately. He dug his fingers hard into Vergil's hips, holding him still when he might have struggled.

He needn't have bothered. Vergil didn't protest his treatment. His breathing was soon just as rapid and shuddering as Dante's, and he lifted his arms to encircle the devil hunter's muscular back.

"Glad you decided to participate," Dante murmured against his twin's neck, and then let out a startled yelp when Vergil bit him. Hard.

"You'll die for this."

Dante laughed with a cruelty he hadn't known he possessed. "You've already died for less, Vergil."

His twin was silent after that, and Dante picked up his pace a bit. Their heavy breathing and the sound of skin against skin filled the cavern. The twins entwined together; Vergil pale against the obsidian floor, and Dante, still mostly clothed, holding him down. They fit together perfectly, Dante decided. He was utterly lost in his twin's closeness, Vergil's warm, pliant body pressed firmly against his own. The slayer felt Vergil's hands slide up his back and fist in his hair, forcing him down into a vicious kiss.

Dante pulled back after a moment to watch his twin. Vergil was struggling to control himself, his body beginning to writhe involuntarily. Dante dropped one hand down between them to touch him, and Vergil's breathing became more erratic, starting to hitch. He came hard, abruptly, and for a second looked so much like a real person that Dante was startled. For just a moment, he'd seen emotions other than anger and hate flicker across Vergil's face. Before he could really think about this, and what it meant, his orgasm crashed over him and wiped all thought from his mind.

"Feeling better?" Vergil spat, his voice dragging Dante out of his hazy, relaxed state. The swordsman glared up from where he was still pinned under his twin. "Now that you've had a proper revenge?"

"You deserved it," the slayer snapped back. "This situation's been reversed dozens of times." Dante couldn't look at his brother. It wasn't as though he could read him. Who knew what Vergil thought about anything, anyway?

He climbed to his feet and zipped up his pants, missing the pained expression that ghosted over Vergil's face at his words. The slayer glanced around the cavern, stepping past the dead gorgon and steadfastly ignoring his twin. The cave went deeper. Another small passageway, overgrown with the glowing moss and lichens, led further into the hillside. Behind him, he heard Vergil slowly and quietly get to his feet.

"Where to now?" he asked, wondering how long it would be before his twin tried to kill him. Vergil, once again dressed in his tattered clothes, brushed past him without a word. Lacking a better plan, Dante followed.

* * *

Grrr I hate this fic, I do, I do... So if you actually got to this point, and didn't wander off in boredom or disgust, let me know. Or if you are both bored and disgusted, but somehow were stubborn enough to completely read the chapter, let me know that too. :D


	6. Night

Disclaimer: I don't own, I just play. Rated M (I'm pretty sure by this point, you know what you're getting into and whether or not it's your cup o' tea).

Random trivia: I just found out that some of the first English settlers in the area where I live were huge fans of the Roman poet Virgil (who not only wrote his own books (such as _The Aeneid_) but was further immortalized in Dante Alighieri's _The Divine Comedy_ and later in DMC, haha) and many of the nearby community and farm names are taken from places that he lived, or went to school, or physical features of these places. I may be a geek, but that made my effing day. :D

A/N: Thank you to everyone who commented or added this to alerts/faves. Feedback is always appreciated. Sorry for the wait, everybody. Hopefully someone's still reading this, lol. This chapter's fairly short; I'm trying to get back into the flow of writing this. Not that it ever really flowed, but… :D

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Night

_"But the sun, though not overcast, must set,  
__And the night cometh; I am old in days,  
__And deeds, and contemplation, and have  
__Met destruction face to face in all his ways."  
__- From 'The Prophecy of Dante' by Lord Byron_

The cavern stretched for miles, Dante assumed, his legs aching from the difficulty of keeping his balance on the slippery slope. He struggled to keep up with Vergil, who seemed determined to lose him in the labyrinthine passageways. The luminescent moss lit the way enough that Dante hadn't yet broken his neck falling over rocks or sliced himself open on the glittering, razor-sharp stalagmites. Ahead of him, Vergil was an infrared glow against the obsidian tunnel.

The swordsman moved forward confidently, as though he knew where he was going. Dante certainly hoped so. He himself was lost as fuck. Vergil seemed to choose the correct passageway instinctively, his worn leather boots scuffing softly on stone. He never hesitated when the paths divided, resolutely choosing the way without a moment's pause.

It made Dante wonder how long Vergil had roamed freely down here. He couldn't have spent all these years as a bound corpse; his changed tattoos testified to some sort of previous exploration. Mundus had enslaved his twin, it was true, but Mundus was now about as dead as a Demon Emperor could get. Dante had taken care of that, ages ago. Pleasant memories of the demon king's death filled Dante's mind; blood and flight and glorious, electrified violence. For a moment, the hunter's mood actually improved.

Until he looked up and saw the silent and empty passageway before him. Vergil was gone. _Shit_.

"Hey, bro. Wait up." Dante called softly. He didn't want to yell; there was no telling what type of icky things he might wake up. Not that he'd refuse a fight of any sort, not at all. But such a battle would slow him down, and put the cranky sociopath further away from him. Dante had no doubt that he needed Vergil to escape from this place. Fuck, he hadn't even been able to find his way out of the desert. The human world was his home, and it was becoming painfully obvious that despite being a half-devil, Hell just wasn't the place for him.

Dante stumbled onward, picking directions randomly. Twice he wound up in dead-ends, the path ending in smooth-sided onyx-coloured caverns and vast subterranean lakes. He didn't touch the water. After Vergil's little rant about rivers of fire and blood, Dante had decided to simply wait out his thirst. The slayer wasn't sure how much time had passed; with no sun to judge by, minutes and hours escaped his comprehension. He couldn't remember a time in his life when he'd felt more claustrophobic than he did now. The tunnels were silent except for the sound of liquid trickling down the rock-face and Dante's unsteady footsteps.

Eventually, the path the hunter was on divided into two tunnels. He couldn't see very far down them before they turned and spiralled around, but one appeared to slope sharply upwards, and the other continued down. Dante would've flipped a coin if he'd had one. Lacking that, he figured it couldn't hurt to trudge uphill for a bit. _Might be a nice change from sliding downhill_.

It wasn't. The ground seemed different; its consistency was almost like coarse grains of sand. _If this leads back to that desert I'm going to be so fucking pissed._ Dante slogged through it with the same bull-headed juggernaut determination that he approached most tasks; if something refused to bend to his will, then he'd simply break it. _Kind of like Vergil in that regard, right? You're more like him than you'll ever admit to being, and not just in looks. Exactly the same kind of monster, except that Vergil doesn't bother hiding it. _

Dante pushed the thoughts away, focusing his energy on the climb. It was beginning to tire him, and he wondered if maybe he'd spent hundreds of years in this maze of caves. He couldn't find a response that made the idea implausible; Hell was a place of eternal torment, after all. _Stuck here with Vergil until the end of time. I wonder who's being punished more harshly? _The slayer eventually reached the end of the tunnel, scrabbling up the final stretch on his hands and knees. He shuffled into a large cavern and began to push himself to his feet.

He was promptly kicked in the back of the head, the force of the blow snapping his face into the stone floor. Dante felt his teeth pierce his bottom lip, blood filling his mouth and adding to his dizziness. He reeled upright, his vision darkening for a moment. Gracelessly he twisted his broken nose back into place, feeling Alastor crackle behind him.

"You're an asshole," he growled. Vergil stood a few feet away, arms folded neatly over his chest and showing no sign that he'd attacked Dante at all. He raised one elegant eyebrow disdainfully, as though inferring that he'd never be so petty.

"You are the absolute epitome of crass and unsubtle behaviour." Dante rolled his eyes, not even sure he knew what all those words meant. So his twin was nursing a grudge, big deal. When wasn't he? The hunter winced as the shattered cartilage melded back together with a crunching sound. He wiped the blood off his face with his sleeve, and tried to feel something for his twin brother other than immense irritation. He expected Vergil had the same problem.

"So you broke my nose? That's unrefined, now isn't it?" Shoving a gun into the swordsman's mouth and unloading a round or two was starting to seem like an excellent idea. Dante's trigger fingers twitched, and the slightest smirk flickered across Vergil's features. The tall, slender man took a step towards Dante, and the hunter moved backwards, keeping the distance between them. He'd never been afraid of Vergil, and he wasn't now, but only a fool would let something so dangerous come so close.

"Too close?" Vergil whispered, his spooky eyes glittering. Dante exhaled slowly, studying his twin. He felt the fury as much as saw it, the crimson sparks beginning to sputter in his brother's pupils. Vergil was utterly enraged, yet his control was such that only Dante would've noticed. A tendril of uneasiness ghosted across the slayer's mind, but he quickly dismissed it. Vergil simply wasn't the threat he'd once been. He was certainly still capable of harming Dante very badly, but he'd actually have to work at it. _Unless he's just going to hurt my feelings; then I'm sure a few choice words would suffice._

Vergil laughed hollowly, and Dante fought the urge to shiver.

"Stay out of my mind," he muttered.

"I'm not exactly given to rolling around in gutters," Vergil sneered. He glided closer, and Dante felt the cold rock of the cavern's walls press against his back. Vergil was suddenly right up against him, hands clutching the collar of his trench coat. Dante could feel him breathing softly, and decided that had they been anywhere else, the sensation might've been comforting. As it was, Vergil's lips brushed over his throat, followed by a lazy drag of incisors.

"Poor little Dante," Vergil murmured, so softly as to be almost inaudible. "Look what this place has done to you. Turned you into exactly what you've spent all your life trying to flee from. You're just another monster now." Dante felt a hot tongue slide slickly over his trachea and tried to summon the strength to shove Vergil away from him. He couldn't, and not just metaphorically. His arms and legs refused to move.

Vergil took a step back and gave him an appraising glance. "Stuck?" he asked coldly, the edges of his mouth twisting sardonically.

"You're dead," Dante hissed. His limbs felt like they were filled with lead. Vergil looked vaguely disappointed that his twin's mouth was still operable.

"Perhaps. I won't have far to go, in any event." He feigned a yawn and moved further away, brushing his ivory hair out of his eyes in a gesture that instantly took Dante back to an icy river at the edge of the world. Vergil was always the one who left.

Beneath them, the stone floor suddenly shuddered, and Dante felt the obsidian walls begin to shake. The rumbling was rhythmic and steady, and small smooth pebbles fell from the ceiling. The glowing moss flickered in time to the reverberations. The slayer urged himself to move, trying to force his limbs into action through sheer strength of will. They refused. Whatever Vergil had done wasn't going to be easily fixed. The seismic activity continued, but Dante noticed a pattern to it. _Almost like footsteps,_ he mused.

"Vergil. What the fuck?" Not exactly eloquent, but Dante wasn't in the mood to dress up his language. The sounds were clearer now, coming closer. Huge, heavy hooves clomped towards them. "What is it?"

"The minotaur," Vergil said drily. He listlessly plucked a thread from his torn shirt, looking disinterested and bored to tears. "Maybe it'll think you're pretty."

* * *

Yeah, it's a fail, but I do want to finish this... Kind of. I wanted to until I started writing this again, and then I remembered how much I hate it. :P Comments and suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I did some revisions, but I need to do more. :)


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